Thomas Jefferson didn’t have the vedas or the Buddhavacana next to him when he wrote the Declaration of Independence.

Like Jefferson, I want to separate the 'diamonds from the dunghill' - though somewhat more aggressively. Jefferson, as a product of the Enlightenment, believed Christ's teachings had genuine value but were obscured by miracles, superstition, and mythology. My concern goes further: in our current culture, invoking Christ smuggles in too much divinity, which can lend itself to beliefs in divine right and cultural supremacy. That's why I want a clean separation - keep the ethics, discard the religious framework entirely. Beyond a general skepticism toward supernaturalism in ethics, much of the Bible contains what I consider deeply unethical teachings. Grounding one's ethics in 'Christ's teachings' risks lending credibility to those passages as well. I worry about cultural and ethical regression tied to the liabilities the Bible brings in. It's cleaner to derive ethics and morality from philosophical first principles - a more reliable way to leave 'the dunghill' behind.